A Short History of Nuclear Folly: Mad Scientists, Dithering Nazis, Lost Nukes, and Catastrophic Cover-ups - Softcover

Praise for A Short History of Nuclear Folly

"The author and son of filmmaker Werner Herzog presents a sardonic, little-known history of misguided, accidental and irresponsible uses of nuclear technology."  
--Los Angeles Times

"Shocking and vitally important."  
--Publishers Weekly

"Unflinching . . . Herzog's use of the word 'folly' is an under-statement."
--The Village Voice

"It is arguably not possible to imagine human stupidity on a grander scale than what Rudolph Herzog has stockpiled in his new book."
--The Brooklyn Rail

"A well-written, if tragic, account of how little nuclear weapons testers knew or were willing to account for."
--Vice

"Amusing . . . interesting and occasionally eye-popping."
--Survival (The Journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies)

"Herzog's study is a shocking and vitally important reminder that we live in an unsteady nuclear age."
--Publishers Weekly

"Looks at the seriocomic side of the history of nuclear experimentation after WWII . . . Alternately funny and scary but overall mostly scary, the book reminds us just how frightening the Cold War really was."
--Booklist

"Darkly funny low points in our nuclear past as well . . . more of-the-moment prognostications of what we can expect from our nuclear neighbors."
--Toronto Star

"For a book about such a heavy subject, A Short History of Nuclear Folly, keeps it quick and snappy and, dare I say, entertaining."
--Philadelphia Review of Books

"An eclectic, innovative approach to the bureaucratization of creativity during the Cold War."
--The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Meticulously researched and thrillingly told--reading this is as informative as it is spine-chillingly entertaining."
--Die Zeit

"A haunting and well phrased warning."
--Focus Online

"Rudolph Herzog's collection of the most incredible stories reads as a tour through the most polluted places on the globe."
--Frankfurter Rundschau

Praise for Rudolph Herzog's Dead Funny: Telling Jokes in Hitler's Germany

"A concise, compelling book." --The Independent (UK)

"Herzog, the son of the film-maker Werner Herzog, shares his father's curious and mordant wit." --The Financial Times

"Dead Funny isn't just a book of wildly off-limits humor. Rather, it's a fascinating, heartbreaking look at power dynamics, propaganda, and the human hunger for catharsis."
--The Atlantic, Best Books of 2012

In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove and The Atomic Café, a blackly sardonic peoples history of atomic blunders and near-misses revealing the hushed-up and forgotten episodes in which the great powers gambled with catastrophe

Did you know?

• Edward Teller, the father of the H-Bomb, relentlessly promoted a plan to use 300 nukes to build a second Panama Canal.


• Atomic technology ended up in many places where it didnt belong: Reactors were used to power satellites, some of which crash-landed and triggered nuclear emergencies. A plutonium battery was also installed at the top of the Himalayas ... and lost.


• Theres a derelict research reactor in the middle of Kinshasa, Congo, which was built by an eccentric Belgian missionary. The reactor is falling apart, and several uranium fuel rods have been stolen.


• John Wayne died of cancer, as did 46 members of the crew of The Conqueror, a notoriously bad B-movie shot in a contaminated canyon near the Nevada nuclear testing range.


• About 40 nuclear weapons were lost during the Cold War, some in populated areas in the U.S. Some almost triggered, others were never retrieved.


• Nazi scientist Gernot Zippe was captured by the Soviets and forced to build the uranium centrifuge, which was used by Iran, Pakistan and North Korea to build bombs.